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.A POEM, 



READ AT THE 



FIRST ANNIVERSARY 



OP 



HOWARD DIVLSIOiV, M. 21, S. OF T. 



NOVEMBER 16, 1866, 
BY CHARLES W, HILLS, P. W. P. 



WASHINGTON, CO., 1866, 
Chronicle Print. 



ITOTB.— At ameekiag of Howard DlTision. 5o. 21, Sona of Temparane«, 
held November 22, 1866, the fallowing resolution was adopted : 

Resolved, That the thanks of Howard Division be tendered Brother 
Charles W. Hills, P. W. P., for the Poem read by him on the occasion of 
our late Anniversary, and that he be requested to furnish the Division 
with a copy of the same for publication. 

The undersigned were appointed a Committee to procure the publica- 
tion of the poem. 

Howard Division, No. 21, S. of T:, Instituted November, 26, 1865, wltli 
thirty-three charter members, and now numbering six hundred memberg 
and lady-visitors, meets every Thursday evening, at 7 o'clock, at Unloa 
Hall, No. 481 Ninth street, between D and E streets. 

WM. P. DREW, 

J. B. JOHNSON, ^ OommlttM. 

GEO. L. VANOB, 



I. 

O'er fated Egypt's deserts wide 

God's cloudy pillar hung, 
His chosen people's course to guide 

The devious wilds among. 

Reposing on the Red Sea's banks, 

From Pharaoh's bondage free, 
Glad shouts arose from Israel's ranks 

In swelling jubilee. 

Philistia's haughty hosts o'erthrown, 
With Afehtaroth and gods untrue, 

Old Samuel raised a sculptured stone — 
" The Lord hath helped us hitherto." 

Here ends our journey of a year ; 

Our brightest hopes surpassed, 
Here our memorial pile we rear, 

A land-mark of the past. 

Trinmphf^r.t on the wished-for coast 

Wc sound onr jubilee, 
As Miriam's song from Israel's host 

Swelled o'er the surging sea. 

Strange mem<n'!es, like a rushing flood 

Released, go tbr^ nging by ; 
They th^'HI the nerver. and stir the blood, 
Like a sudden shot in a silent wood, 

Resounding sharp and high. 

Tb'M<^hts ri-^e of nights of gloom profound, 

TVhen a faithful few would meet; 
While the winery wind, with a sullen sound, 
Swept mournfully his chilling round 
Through each deserted street. 



When over a dark and ashen sky 
The wind-driven vapors swept, 
And the pattering rain, like a sobbing sigh. 
As the moaning wind went hurrying by, 
Its ceaseless music kept. 

The gorgeous Spendthrift of the Year, 

Old Autumn, cloud-bedight, 
Storm-guarded, held his revel here 

One year ago to-uight. 

The murky clouds were piled on high, 
Like mountain-cliffs against the sky. 
And seemed, in wild and wrathful play, 
To mar the hope of coming day. 

As friends to right, as foes to wrong, 
In numbers weak, in purpose strong, 
We met that night, and now we find 
Six hundred more our ranks have joined. 

Success on energy attends ; 

Sloth checks each grand reform. 
The faithless are fair-weather friends, 

The faithful dare the storm. 

II. 

When battling myriads trod the coast 

Of sacred Palestine, 
The Cross was to the Christian host 

A grand, all-conquering sign : 
The Moslem legions quailed and fled 
Before that symbol strange and dread. 

Where swept the thunder-gust of war 

Like desert-born typhoon, 
Flushed swift-descending cimeter, 

Waved Islam's crescent moon. 
High flamed the Cross, and seemed to be 
The Avatar of Destiny. 



Grandly before our ranks has moved 
Unchecked a sign of power; 

Our name a talisman has proved 
In every trying hour ; 

The synonym of noble fame, 

Proudly we bear a Howard's name. 

No Ifiurels deck the brows of those 

Who lead our battle's van; 
No trophies rich from conquered foes 

Repay the toil for man. 
In Right's great conflict heroes move 
Unsung of men, but known above. 

In mythic days the brave in wars 

Upon the changeless ^ky 
Were fixed amid the fadeless stars, 

For immortality, 
In apotheosis sublime, 
In constellated pantom'me. 

The moral hero yet will find, 

Though toiling all unseen, 
His noble actions deep-enshrined 

Within the hearts of men; 
Better than blackened corpses hid 
In heaven-aspiring pyramid. 

Age-shaken towers that tottering stand 

Or lie disjointedly. 
Half-buried in the drifting sand, 

Attest too mournfully 
How powerless are such piles to shed 
True glory on the builder's head. 

Defaced, unread, sand-buried lies 
Each lofty cenotaph; 



6 . 

The patient worker, when he dies, 

Requires no epitaph ; 
When life'« gieat harvest-field he leaves, 
With joy he brings his gathered sheaves 

A quaint old proverb the Arabs tell 

Evermore, like a midnight cry, 
Is haunting my dreams -a nightmare spell- 
It rings in my ears like a tolling bell, 

'• Tae reaiembiaiice of youth is a sigh-" 

in. 

Tuwciing -dbuve the glacier^^ cold, 

, . or ragged Switzerland, 

In mora s uacertain light behold 

A spectral figure stand ! 
driai, shadowy, Titan-like — its forai 
Misl shrouded, throned amid the storm. 

Uprising, on the startled air 

The ghostly shape inirudes. 
And towers, like palm in desert bare, 

Mid nature's solitudes, 
A statel}^, cloud-wrapped sentinel, 
Mute warder o'er the land of Tell. 

Awe-struck the early traveller views, 

Projecting crags between. 
His every motion reproduced 

UpoQ that mighty screen; 
A giant show — an acted dream— 
A grand, colossal pantomime I 

Upou the future's curtained wall 

Man's, every act shall live. 
Pictures to please, or to appal, 

Alike must all survive ; 
The impress, made, the figure traced, 
It lives, and cannot be effaced. 



7. 

No quaiiii- device the actor screens. 

No charigH'at mortal's nod, 
But ixu'ie.] hands adjust the tcenes. 

The audience, a God! 
The curtain, dread futurity ! 

The period, all etoi nity ! 

IV. 

Park misery broods in awe and dread 

On sin cur.-od man's estate, 
And ruin stalks with fatal tread 

O'er hciirth-stones desolate: 
Intemperance cariies want and fright 
To many a wretched home to-night. 

On cloud-veiled 6inai, thander-riven, 

Before Jehovah's nod, 
To waiting Israel were given 

The oracles of God ; 
Bui modern Solons overawe 
God's grand prohibitory law. 

The wretch who vends hell's poison here, 

Go wander where he will, 
On land, on sea, must plainly hear, 
Forever thundering in his ear, 

The 1nw_"Thnu s},nlt not kill!" 

The wailing wind will sound a dirge, 

The storm a victim's moan, 
And in the boom of every surge, 

He'll hear a dying groan. 

In awful retribution just. 

From Heaven why rushes not 

A vengeful' fire to lick the dust 
From each polluted spot 

Where, nightly, Satan's agents true 

Their master's murderous work pursue ? 



O, God ! who, prayer-restrained, 

Spared Moab's pious sire, 
When on doomed Sodom rained 

Heaven's all-devouring fire, 
Spare Thou, nor blot from earth again, 
The modern Cities of the Plain I 

V. ■ 
Sin-hardened weaklings villify 

Our cause, and on it cast, 
Like weak, time-serving Shimei 

When grief-bowed David passed, 
Jeers, scoffs, and sneers — we can forgive, 

The truth can never die, 
And still the Sons of Temperance live 

To bless humanity. 

Its work-stained banners borne aloft, 

Still first in order moves 
Old Number One, whose shelter oft 

To many a wanderer proves, 
In time of doubt and sorest need, 
A Good Samaritan indeed. 

No bard, though skilled in numbers due, 
And thoughts and words sublime. 

Could make the name of Number Two 
Adorn a modern rhyme : 

But firm in faith, in numbers few, 

Its streagth approves its members true. 

A host of workers, rescued, free, 

Triumphantly attest 
In doing good that NumberlThree 

Is Equal with the best. 

Excelsior'k record will remain ; 
Still wrongs demand redress, 



9 



And rising, it may ^^et attain 
To higher usefulness. 

May old Potomac combat wrong 
While rolls Potomac's tide along; 

To fainting ones may Twenty- Three 
A Fountain in the desert be. 

Far-reaching in the peaceful vale, 
Unmoved by floods of wrong, 

A cable tried that cannot fail, 
An anchor sure and strong, 

May Hope remain, the cheering bow 
Of promise, spanning gulfs of woe. 

On battle-scarred Virginia's soil 
Mount Vernon gathers fame; 

And proudly may those workers toil 
Who bear a Lincoln's name. 

Far in the east — Judea's realm, 

A star rose on the sight, 
And, resting over Bethlehem, 

Dispelled a moral night : 
But here, reversing nature's law, 

Shining amid the mist, 
The parting clouds reveal a star 

Ascending in the west. 
Its cheering light the gloom pervades, 

No storms its brightness mar ; 
May Time grow old ere sinks or fades 

Our glorious Western Star! 

And Western Mission, latest born, 
With str.jng, unyieldiug will. 

And patient zeal, is struggling on, 
Its mission t'> fulfill. 

When battle joins with vice and sin 

May triumph greet our Benjamin. 



10 

Yl. 

As, tracking ^^estward with the sun, 

Sweep scourges pestilent 
From steaming- pools and marshes dank 

In torrid Orient; 
So sweeps, unchecked, a wasting plague. 

Far worise to sinful man 
Than dire diseases jungle-bred 

In fated Hmdostan. 

An old tradition, strange and vague, 

A fearful tale of woe, 
Of the time when the desolating plague 

Raged in London long ago, 
Obtrudes upon my memory, 

As fevers come and go. 

Death stalked unchecked, with noiseless tread. 

Through street and silent hall, 
And a nameless terror, a shuddering dread, 

Descended, a dismal pall, 
Over perishing hundreds leprous and red 

With the curse of the primal fall 

The vials of God's just wrath 
Were emptied above them at last, 

And full upon their path 

Down swept, like a rushing blast, 

The gathered doom of years, 
Wnile fitfully hurrying past 

Trooped phantoms of formless fears. 

Men quiverin^i: died, and stranger hands 

To the charnel-houses bore 
Each festering corpse ; grim horror stands 

By each grave forever more. 
Like a fog-wrapped tower on the dreary sands 

Of a dreaded, storm-swept shore. 



11 

Undisturbed bj the dash of a single oar, 

Each hovel and palace past, 
With a surging rush and a gurgling roar, 

Flowed the turbid river fast. 
Glassed with slimy ooze and tainted gore 

Dropped from the death-carts trundling past. 

Unscared lurks the thief in the grass-grown street, 

In an awful solitude, 
And turret and dome, unentered, secrete 

The vulture's filthy brood, 
And lazily flapping their shadowy wings 

They fly in search of food. 

Thank God ! through the foggy, pestilent air 

Resounds, in quavering swell. 
From an old cathedral's turret square, 

The toll of a single bell. 
Oh! heaven, how sweetly that melody rare 

On the pallid listeners fell I 

Like the morning sun glad hope broke then 

Through the all-pervading gloom, 
And proclaimed the lifting once again 

Of the overshadowing doom ; 
That men could mourn for their fellow-men 
And follow them to the tomb. 

O, bell, on the age-battled turrets of time, 

Ring the knell of woes long borne, 
Commingling your tones, in chorus sublime, 

With the rending of fetters long worn, 
And proclaiming abroad, in exultant chime, 

That men may cease to mourn I 

In hope we await the era of right 
By visioned prophet foretold, 



LIBRARY OF CC)NGR||| 

016 112 636 6 • 



12 



When legalized wrong and arrogant might 
Shall fall ; end when none shall behold 

To the Devil, clad like an angel of light, 
Men sell their souls for gold. 

0, speed the long-expected day 
When, like wicked, Godless states, 

Dark evil and wrong shall })ass away; 
When over each city's gates 

Inscribed, undimmed, shall shine for aye, 
"Behold, the plague abates!'^ 

When the wretch who heeds not misery's cry. 

Shall feel that our God is just, 
That the high and the low by the Deity 

Were framed from a common dust; 
When a soulless faith and apathy 

Shall yield to a higher trust! 



I TRRftRY OF CONGRESS 

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016 112 636 b 



